


family tradition

by zauberer_sirin



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Father-Daughter Relationship, First Kiss, Future Fic, Gunshot Wounds, Phil Coulson has really bad luck, Skoulson RomFest 2k15, Working My Feels Through Fic, guys I'm super invested in Skye and her father okay, skoulsonfest2k15
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-23
Updated: 2015-01-23
Packaged: 2018-03-08 18:48:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,154
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3219563
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zauberer_sirin/pseuds/zauberer_sirin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cal guesses he can't let the man die. Can he?</p><p>Written for the Skoulson RomFest 2k15 - Prompt: family issues</p>
            </blockquote>





	family tradition

She's crying. Look at those big eyes; they're not like her mother's at all. Where do they come from?

Oh yes the man, the man is going to bleed out.

"Please, dad."

She only calls him dad when she needs something. He doesn't think she does it on purpose, it's more like a defense mechanism. What has she had to survive? He wishes she would tell him. She never talks. They've been together for almost a month, chasing down Raina, building something here. And _he_ had to intrude. He always intrudes. Even these weeks he and his daughter were – working, that's how she put it – together Phil Coulson has always intruded. She has been talking to him every day, and finally a couple of days ago she asked him to help them. He had thought that once she spent time with her real family she would stop relying on – _substitutes_.

He could let the man die. It would be easy. The bullets didn't do any significant damage – the bastard is lucky, on top of everything – but they are bleeding him fast. He'll die if he doesn't get any help in the next few minutes.

"I'll do whatever you want," Daisy – Skye, she asked him to call her Skye, come on, remember – is saying.

Like he is going to bargain with her feelings. He does know better – she needs her father, her real father. It would be better if he let this man, Coulson, die. It is tempting. It wouldn't be the worst thing he has done. He's pretty sure he's killed better men than this. There are so many things he has done and would do for his daughter.

He knows that doesn't matter. The years of living as a fugitive. Tracking down whoever had a shred of information on her. The illegal practice. Surviving rather than living, living on dim hopes. He knows Daisy doesn't care about his reasons, doesn't care about how much he loves her. These past weeks trying to help her, training with her, explaining where her gift comes from and what it means. If Cal lets this man die now it's over. All of it. She will never see him as he wants her to. She will never speak to him again. If this SHIELD man dies, it's over for Cal as well. He can't allow that.

"Hang on, hang on," his daughter is saying. But not to him. To Coulson.

He has his eyes half-closed in pain, about to enter shock, but he still tilts his head towards her, trying to look at her, and she is holding his bloodied-hand so tightly.

Would she care this much if it were Cal about to die? Would she hold his hand like this?

He can't really watch her cry, even for her own good.

He saves the man's life, of course.

 

+

 

He opens his eyes tentatively, very still, in case any movement might make things worse.

She's sort of relieved to see him awake. Even if Cal told her he was out of the woods, still, it's good to see his eyes.

"How do you feel?"

"Like I've been shot twice," Coulson says.

Skye smiles. "Accurate."

"Where am I?"

"My room," she replies. "We couldn't get you to a hospital, obviously. So yeah, feel free to bleed on my bed."

This time Coulson smiles. "It's a nice room."

"It's awful," she says and he does this little distracted truthful nod.

She only intended to stay here until they caught Raina but now that she's fled town Skye guesses they'll have to start with the search all over again.

"Sorry the mission went south," she says. 

Coulson touches his side over the bedclothes. Presses a bit to see how much it hurts. Raina must have smelled them coming, bolted and left her goons to set a trap. Skye feels guilty about not just being folish enough to fall for it, but for involving Coulson in all this.

"I never thank you for coming here," she says.

"I wasn't of much help."

"The opposite of help, actually," she says, making him smile.

"I thought I was dying," he says.

"You were dying."

"I thought I was a goner," Coulson tells her. He gives her a knowing look. "I guess I have to thank you for having survived that."

"It's okay," she says. She wondered how much he remembered about yesterday. A lot, apparently. "I only applied some pressure. I'm sure Cal would have made the right thing anyway. I mean, I sort of have to believe it."

She shrugs and looks away. She's not completely sure about that – there was a moment there where it looked like Cal was going to let Coulson die. But she doesn't want to think about her father like that. She knows he hates Coulson, for reasons both real and made up. She's not going to broker a truce – she knows Coulson, she knows what he wants for her, knows he's not interested in being at war with her father – but she can at least try to get them to not kill each other.

Coulson takes her hand in his.

It's warm, a bit too warm, he had a fever just hours ago. But the gesture is sufficiently uncharacteristic of him (they are not in some imminent grave danger or going through emotional trauma) that Skye finds it intriguing.

"What?" she says, looking at their fingers laced together.

"I don't know," he says. "Are you all right? We haven't really talked since I've come."

"We've talked all the time."

"It's not the same on the phone," he says. Skye thinks no, it's easier in a way. Coulson sighs, a distracted expression on his face as he stares at her. "I've missed seeing your face."

Skye kisses him.

She tries to make it chaste and soft in case he's not into it but she sort of fails. She goes a bit crazy on his mouth. She's missed his face, too. She just didn't know how much. And all that blood, and the idea that she might lose him. Because that's what it was, wasn't it. She was selfish, she didn't want to lose him, and so stupidly. She digs her fingernails into his palm and lets go a bit when Coulson begins to kiss her back. She knows this is probably the worst time – worst place, Cal's in the house, jesus, she thinks, this is really messed up – but maybe it's the only time and the way Coulson's tongue presses against hers, the way he moans when her teeth catch his lower lip, the surprising feeling of inevitability of it all, so weird, because if this was inevitable, why did it need a couple of bullets into his body; Skye wants to believe it could have happened anyway, something like this, it feels too good to leave it up to chance.

Coulson pulls away.

"Skye," he mutters, touching her cheek, amazed.

She guesses that was rather sudden, rather impulsive. But he did get shot. You can't really blame her.

"I'm sorry?" she winces, in case the amazement is not the good kind.

"Don't," he says, very sternly. Like she's totally not allowed to apologize and that's an order. It makes her feel good because – yeah, she's not really sorry. "I didn't think you could –"

"I didn't either," she says, and it's almost true. She didn't think it in precise terms before. She's having some sort of revelation right now, thank you very much. "And I know everything is sort of a mess now. _I_ am a mess."

"The face comment wasn't really..."

"No, no, I know."

"But if it were," he says, giving her a kind of twinkly expression. Coulson is doing a twinkly thing. She's amazed. "I can do better."

"Oh I know you can," Skye teases him, smiling, wishing he'd speed all this up and kiss her already.

"You're not a mess."

"Yes, I am."

"You're okay."

She grins.

He makes a gesture to kiss her again.

"No, wait," she stops him. Coulson gives her an inquiring glance. Wow is he cocky. "Take off your t-shirt."

Now he gives her a shocked glance, looking terrified and excited about what that could mean. "Skye?"

She touches his arm.

"I just remembered your clothes were full of bullet holes. You had to borrow this from..."

"This is your father's, isn't it?" he says, realizing too, looking appalled. "Oh god."

Skye looks at him. This is probably too much for him, wouldn't blame him if he – 

"You still want to kiss me?" she asks.

"It's horrifying how much I still do, yes," Coulson says and then he chuckles to himself.

"Take off your t-shirt," she repeats, more seriously now.

Coulson obeys, pulling the t-shirt over his head while trying to keep eye contact with Skye.

The bandage Cal used to cover his wounds goes all over his stomach and torso. There's the scar from where his heart was torn to pieces. She covers it with her hand. She needs to keep the new one safe. Coulson glances up from her fingers to her face. He looks happy.

"Kiss me," she says.

Coulson obeys.

 

+

 

She finds Cal in the kitchen.

He is thinking about whether he should bring up what he has just seen, this unexpected shocking ultimate betrayal, though he would rather erase the image from his mind forever.

"He's sleeping," she says, leaving out the fact that it was probably making out with her what had exhausted him. "I was thinking he should eat something. Do we have soup? Or something? Also, do you know how to make soup?"

Coulson would probably kill her but her diet hasn't been the best during this time she's been spending with her father. Cal shares her predilection for fast food and greasy joints – which he pointed out soon, always eager to make her aware of the similitudes between them, always a bit too desperate but god if there's someone in the world who can understand trying too hard, that's Skye. This is merely a safe house, they don't have much in the way of sustenance here.

"I don't know why you asked me to patch him up if you were going to open his wounds yourself," Cal says.

She makes a gesture of disgusts. That's way too unsubtle.

"You saw us," she realizes.

"I was going to check up on my patient," he says, not bothering to hide his discomfort.

Skye rolls her eyes. "Look, Cal, you might be my biological father but I'm not going to have this particular father-daughter conversation with you."

She has this decided expression which sometimes really frightens Cal. He always believed they'd be together as a family in the end, he'd sacrifice too much not to believe that, but this girl – she might be his girl but she is also a strange, hard-edged girl – looks like she could walk out on him and never come back, never look back, if he does the wrong thing, if he doesn't measure up. 

She's not sure how to do this. They are not really father and daughter. No, he has yet to earn this. He's still a murderer, still unstable. Just because he has told her some stories about her mother and he's helping her find a killer that doesn't mean he has the right to comment on her private life. Skye didn't know she had a private life until ten minutes ago, not really. She's still dizzy with the idea of Coulson and her. And Cal and her don't have the experience. He wasn't there when she started getting interested in boys, or when she had her heart broken for the first time, or when she moved in with her hacker boyfriend, or when the guy she liked turned out to be a Nazi. No, they have skipped all that. And unlike other stuff that's not really Cal's fault. He was robbed of that chance to be whatever kind of father he would have been. Skye is not blaming him – she swears she isn't. But she is not ready to talk about Coulson with _herself_ , she is obviously not ready to talk about it with her lunatic-if-well-meaning father. No way.

"He took Whitehall from me," Cal says between his teeth.

He tries not to be angry. He's good, he's good, he's been good. He's trying really hard. For some reason he had thought – believed, because happy endings have to be absolute – that once he found his baby girl everything would be easy, already written, perfect. This is not what he had expected.

Skye huffs. Again with the Whitehall stuff. She gets it, she really does. But. She wishes Cal would see it her way. Or Coulson's.

"Yes, he did," she concedes. "And I'm glad he did."

"How can you say that? You know what he did to your mother."

"I know. And I wish I could have finished that monster with my own hands. But you spent your whole life obsessed with revenge. Then what? You would have felt more hollow, I know you would have. Coulson saved your life, and maybe he saved more."

She's naive. Naive and unfortunately in love. She's going to suffer. How can she stop that without losing her? 

"He will never understand you," he says.

"Why not? You understood my mother."

She shrugs. She doesn't think her mother regretted it. Her power wasn't as scary as Skye's or maybe it was just as scary in a different way. But that didn't stop her. That fear is not going to stop her either. She has decided – like, _today_. Like when she had her tongue down Coulson's throat but that's just a detail. The decision is what matters. Skye believes she can have her abilities _and_ the life she wants. Her mother obviously believed that too.

"Then perhaps I should have left your mother alone," Cal says.

It's not the first time... he thought about it many times, during those days when she was kidnapped and he didn't know where they had taken her. And when he found her. It would have been better. It was her attachment to him, her desire to take roots, which had made it easier for SHIELD – or Hydra, it didn't matter, it's all the same, he's SHIELD, Coulson's SHIELD, how could Daisy do that – to find her.

She knows what he means. He's told her enough about her mother to guess at his huge guilt about her death. Skye thinks she wouldn't like that, minimizing her choice. It's a silly little girl's idea but she wants to believe her parents loved each other. Cal doesn't have the right to try and erase that.

"Then I wouldn't be here," Skye says. "I know it's really selfish, after what happened to her but... I'm glad I'm here. Even in my worst moments, I'm always glad I'm alive. Thank you."

This is more than she's told him in almost a month. Is that nature? She was like that, too, her mother. Warm and cheerful, but reserved. She had her reasons, that became clear later. Maybe his daughter has her reasons too. But if she's as stubborn as her mother had been there's not much of a chance she's going to give up the man she loves either.

"I'm going to go down to the shops," she announces. Maybe she'll get something nice for Coulson's ultra-developed palate. They sell nice oyster omelettes across the street. She glances up at Cal. "You just have to promise me not to kill him while I'm gone."

That's kind of funny, he thinks. It's actually funny, very. He has a funny daughter. He always wanted a funny daughter.

She's sort of almost not joking.

"I saved his life yesterday," Cal points out.

"Yeah but that was before..." she gestures, before the words die on her lips out of embarrassment.

He looks away. He doesn't want to go back to that image either. 

"It's raining," he points out.

It's always raining, Skye thinks. Not that she doesn't think her weeks with her father haven't helped – they have helped her above all, and that was the main thing, even though Raina has managed to evade them again – but suddenly she wants to go home. The team. The Playground. Director Coulson. The future should be interesting.

"I'll take an umbrella," she says.

"We don't have one."

She puts her hand on her hip, that little disapproving gesture. He's beginning to not see her mother in it. He's beginning to just see her. He doesn't know if that's a sad thing.

"Cal. It's just rain."

"I worry."

Her face softens. "I know."

She touches the lapel of his suit. She remembers one day weeks ago when he had the collar of his jacket up and didn't notice and she fixed it without a thought. He had looked at her – so grateful for such a crumb. She had felt so bad.

He smiles. Dai – Skye throws her leather jacket on. She hesitates when he reaches the door, casting a glance towards her room.

"I've _already_ promised not to kill him," Cal complains.

 

+

 

Minutes later he walks, looking a bit disoriented, into the kitchen, while Cal is still there, surprising him.

He tells the man she's left the house, gone to get food.

It's the first time they are alone since – yes, since Cal tried to beat him to death in Puerto Rico. Coulson looks around again, frightened. He is smart to be scared. Not so much for showing it.

"I'm not going to kill you," he says, not for lack of wanting. "I didn't go to all the trouble of saving your life just to kill you the next day."

"With all due respect, Cal. You look like the kind of person who would do exactly that."

He sounds cocky about it.

Cal gives him a vaguely menacing look.

He can't stand the way Daisy looks at this man – once he has understood it. It reminds him too much of... but no. Daisy is meant for a better fate. History has to put it right not – mess it up again. Cal can't stand the idea. She'll only get hurt. And she's his to protect. She's not his, he understands that, Dais – _Skye_ wouldn't like him to talk like this. There are things he has already learned about her, the person she is, the peculiar way she sees the world. SHIELD's Phil Coulson can never understand that.

The man sits by the kitchen counter. He lets out a noise of pain from the effort. He should probably not be up at all. Well, it's his own fault, if he kills himself.

"So the lab raid didn't get us anywhere in the end," he comments.

He could object to the word "us", he could object a lifetime to everything this man is. He could object to way his hand had wrapped around her hip when she was kissing him he could kill him for that. But he's also come to invade their mission. This is their mission, his and Daisy's, but of course she explained it was Coulson's too, that he had lost a man he cared about because of Raina's intervention.

Cal is beginning to rethink his whole role in the matter. It's not just that he misjudged his daughter's position towards Coulson – he had misjudged it and then some – and Cal had wanted to prove himself the better man, it's that Daisy seems so upset about her gift, so scared of it. He is still convinced it's a good thing and eventually she'll be proud of it, what it means, her lineage. But perhaps leading her to San Juan had been a mistake. He never meant to force her.

And then there was Raina. That has been his mistake, he owns up to it. The kind of mistake he would make in his blidness, his drive to find his daughter.

"I taught Raina too well," he confesses. "She knows how to slip through the cracks."

"Did you notice she was a megalomaniac when you were mentoring her?" Coulson asks, not bothering to sound even slightly friendly about it.

"She always had a tendency to believe she was the center of the universe," Cal admits and sure, in hindsight, he shouldn't have given Raina the tools to realize that dream, but he doesn't need Phil Coulson of SHIELD to tell him that.

"Great job," Phil Coulson of SHIELD says, anyway.

"You find this funny, Mr Coulson?"

"Funny? No. I'm still _mourning_ the consequences of your and Raina's clever plan to force Skye to meet her destiny."

He might have to break his promise and kill him.

He can't.

He can't let Daisy see him angry, either. Even if he has his reasons. He doesn't know anything about this guy (she doesn't talk, she has never tried to sell Coulson on him, which, now that he thinks about it, feels weird), other than the fact that he represents everything Cal hates, that his organization tore his family apart – is still trying to? – and that he can't know if he's just taking advantage of his Daisy. He might not know much about being a father but these misgivings are natural. He's just some guy. Probably too simple to understand what she is going through. Probably too average to even _grasp_ at the magnificence of her power. Who is he anyway? Some _old_ guy. Sure, Cal's wife was older than Phil Coulson when they met but it's not the same.

Coulson is now looking at him with some apprehension.

"Would you feel more comfortable if you had your gun, Phil?" he taunts him.

"I would," Coulson tells him. "It's only an ICER, a tranquilizer. It shouldn't make you _too_ uncomfortable."

He guesses it's only fair. He did try to kill him once.

He goes to get the gun. He puhes it towards Coulson.

"You will never understand her," he tells him, the subtext unmissable.

"I know," the man says, quietly, sadly. He doesn't look surprised that Cal _knows_. "And it's not just this gift of hers. There are many things I'll never understand about Skye. But maybe I can try. Be by her side." He stops. "I shouldn't be saying this. You're definitely going to kill me now. Aren't you?"

"I promised her I wouldn't. I always keep my promises to my daughter."

Coulson nods. "I can see that."

He concentrates, in search of the slightest patronizing or antagonistic tone, because he swears – no, he can't keep going back. Going back to Whitehall dying in front of his eyes the little blood dots on his shirt like badges but it wasn't his hands and he didn't suffer he didn't pay for the nightmares his wife had all her life nor the nightmares Cal has now and Cal can't go back. She is counting on him. She is trusting him to put aside – but for what? For this man? He's SHIELD. Daisy can't understand. Men like this one torched her mother's home, and the home of her family. Pulled every beam of the hospital down. Records, photographs gone. This man – this man Cal saw kissing his daughter his only family just half an hour ago and now he's sitting in his kitchen like a big jerk – this man looks exactly like the men who did that.

Coulson touches his side for a moment, wincing in pain.

"The painkillers are wearing off," Cal says, begrudingly taking a bottle from the cupboard.

"Thanks."

Don't think I don't want to see you suffer. Don't think I'll ever forgive you for Whitehall. Don't think I'll ever forgive you for – 

But he can't go back.

In a way he knows she was right, that's what stung about it, that killing Whitehall was about looking back. He wants something to look forward to. But maybe this man will take that away from him, too.

"When she told me she had found you, that you were going to help her track down Raina, I was worried of course. But I was also glad," Coulson says, surprisingly. "Skye deserves a family."

Cal stares at him. He can't stand the way Skye looks at this man.

He has taken so much from him. Is he really going to let him take this one too?

Well, he guesses it's a bit late for this one.

"Yes, she does," he agrees.

He doesn't add that it's pretty clear she already got one. He doesn't want to give him that win.

Then Skye comes back from the shops, hands full of oyster omelette and hot tea and rain and she looks at Phil Coulson and yes, Cal hates the way the man looks at his daughter in return.

"See? I didn't kill him," he points out.

The man frowns.

Skye tilts her head just like she does.

"That's funny. I always wanted a funny father," she says.


End file.
